A targeted treatment for terminal lung cancer could help to improve the lives of thousands of patients who carry a specific gene mutation, experts say.

The drug Iressa (gefitinib), which gained its European licence yesterday is designed to treat “non-small” cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This form of the disease is very hard to treat, but accounts for 80 per cent of lung cancers in Britain — about 30,000 cases a year.

In clinical trials, gefitinib has been shown to slow the growth of cancer in about one in ten of these patients who carry a mutated form of a gene that controls cell growth.

AstraZeneca emphasised that the pill will only benefit a select proportion of patients, much in the same way that only some women with breast cancer benefit from treatment with Herceptin (trastuzumab).

But doctors said that any advance in treatment for non-small cell lung cancer was welcome as it remains one of the deadliest diseases in Britain, with less than one in ten patients surviving for five years after diagnosis.

From today, Iressa will be available to private patients in Britain or where local health authorities agree to fund the costs of the medication, expected to be thousands of pounds per year.

But the drug is not expected to be appraised by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) for wider use on the NHS until May 2010, which campaigners fear could lead to patients being deprived treatment in a postcode lottery.

AstraZeneca, the manufacturer, said that it was ready to offer the health service a “cost-sharing” deal on the drug, making it available for a single fixed payment that covers the duration of a patient’s treatment, regardless of how long that may be.

Currently, only about 65 per cent of patients with advanced NSCLC receive treatment, usually in the form of chemotherapy.

Studies in Asia suggest that 25 per cent of suitable patients taking Iressa survived at least a year with “no disease progression”, compared with only 7 per cent given standard chemotherapy treatment.

Nicholas Thatcher, Professor in Medical Oncology at the Christie Hospital in Manchester, said that the drug would probably only be given to advanced cases where patients had stopped responding to other treatments.

Although not a cure for a terminal illness, the drug could give patients extra months or weeks of life to spend with loved ones or put their affairs in order, he said.

“For those patients that can benefit, this represents a big step forward in treatment of the disease, avoiding some of the potentially toxic side-effects of chemotherapy,” he added.

The gene mutation relevant to the drug affects production of a protein called epidermial growth factor receptor (EGFR), which is associated with the way tumour cells can spread and grow for many different types of cancer. It is thought that such a mutation occurs in between 10-15 per cent of lung cancers in Europe.

Testing whether someone had the mutation could be done by a routine biopsy or blood test, Professor Thatcher added, which may become a standard procedure when a patient is diagnosed with the disease.

Rosemary Gillespie, chief executive of the Roy Castle Lung Foundation, said that she welcomed the drug being licensed, but added that the NHS should consider the treatment for appropriate patients “as a matter of urgency”.

“There are so few treatments currently available for this devastating disease, and outcomes are still very poor compared to other forms of cancer,” she said.

“We do not want to see Primary Care Trusts denying patients treatment because they refuse to fund it. We do not want to see a postcode lottery.”

A spokesman for AstraZeneca said that the drug represented a “significant advance” in the treatment of non small cell lung cancer, but declined to comment on the drug’s exact cost “until a cost-effective price is established with NICE”.

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